Vacation is about over!

Wow. It's been like 3 weeks since I've blogged. Good heavenly days. It's just been one day right after another. !

My brother blogs much more faithfully than I do, and I enjoy reading what he's been up to on a daily basis. Maybe I think he has a more exciting life than me, and in some ways, he does. He's WORKING this summer, and I, well, I did not have to be employed. How cool is that!

Speaking of work, I get to go back on August 8, which is next Wednesday. I did make a visit to both schools this last week, and met with both principals, as well as the psych coordinator downtown. All meetings were productive, which is not what I'm going to be able to assert after 5 days of inservice meetings, the 8th, 9th, 10th, 13th, and 14th. School starts here on the 15th, which is fairly early.

Have any of you heard of "BIST"? It stands for "Behavior Intervention Support Team", and is a program one of my schools is adopting in order to deal with problem student behavior. The website is http://www.bist.org/index.html . I get to attend an all day session in order to learn about this program. I gotta tell you, this school needs to do SOMETHING in order to get things under control besides just a change of staff. In MY day (don't you just love it when old people like me start out sentences with, "In MY day...") you could get in trouble in school for: chewing gum, if you were female-wearing jeans or slacks, closing a classroom window, not showing up to class without parents calling in, backtalking a teacher, and printing assignments rather than using cursive writing. At this particular school I'm at, one day last year we had a student bring marijuana in a pocket in his shoe, and another student bring a pellet gun. All in one day. We expelled several students, and there were many days that cops were throughout our building. Neighborhood shootings were in the news. Yet for the most part, teachers did an admirable job.

Did I say I'm looking forward to this year? I am. I really am.